Andrew Carmichael

There are many places where the ‘ideal’ home could be built. One of these places would be the Western tip of Lake Cachuma, in Southern California, at the base of the Santa Ynez Waterfall. This is located about 100 miles North-West of Los Angeles, 15 miles from Santa Barbara, and is about 10 miles from the Pacific Coast. The average summer temperature is 25ºC and the Winter temperature rarely drops below 15ºC. Lake Cachuma is a large oligotrophic, freshwater lake that feeds the Santa Ynez River with a 50 foot waterfall.

The Amsterdammer Style of Home -
Particularly Heat Effective

Since it has been established that heating is the biggest consumer of energy in the average home, it would be sensible to build the home in the ‘Amsterdammer’ style: tall and thin. A normal house has a wide base and a wide roof to match. This wide roof provides a big surface area through which lots of precious heat energy may escape. A tall thin house has a roof with a small surface area and, being tall, may have several floors through which the heat energy may have to travel before reaching the roof. Ridiculously thick insulation between floors and in the roof would help minimise heat loss. Insulation traps warm air by having a very low thermal conductivity.

A Dinner Plate -
A Classic Example of Heat Loss
Through a Wide Area

A danger with this type of home is that it may be too insulated and become unbearably hot in summer. The usual solution to this problem is air conditioning. The water from the lake could be used as a coolant and the power from the waterfall used to drive the cool air around the house. If this was not sufficient then electricity could be used to power the air conditioning. Hydroelectric power using the waterfall, or solar power by using panels beside the house would provide a renewable source of power and would use no natural resources.

The cooling effect of the lake water could also be used is a refrigeration unit for food, in place of the inefficient standard refrigerator. The water cooled unit would require no electricity, the water requiring simply to be drawn from the lake, passed through the refrigerator, and returned to the Santa Ynez River.

Another everyday aspect of living that requires heat is cooking. Using a cooker or an oven both generate colossal amounts of heat, of which only a fraction is actually used. Even microwaves use vast amounts of electrical energy, very little of which is passed to the food. The obvious, and only, solution to this problem is to not cook anything and just eat cold food, like sandwiches and pickled gherkins.

After heat, the second biggest waste of energy is on transport. Although more energy efficient modes of transport are now being developed, it is far too wasteful to even consider using a car. Lake Cachuma is in a beautifully fertile region of California. Although the locals prefer to use the soil to grow grapes, any kind of crops would readily grow. The sun shines for most of the year and a simple irrigation system from the lake could easily be constructed. The lake borders on the Ynez National Park, and hence is not heavily populated so there would be plenty of space to have a large farm for not just crops, but animals too.

Lake Cachuma, like most lakes in the region, is very oligotrophic and is teaming with edible fish such as bass, sturgeon and pike, to name but a few. While these fish could obviously be eaten, it would be a terrible waste of resources to go and catch them with a line. A more efficient way to catch fish would be to use the method frequently used by noted American angler, Don Johnson. This involves hanging a normal fishing net in the waterfall and letting the fish just fall into it. Since cooking has been made taboo, these fish will have to be eaten raw, but since cooking would only destroy valuable protein, this is probably for the best.

Wasting resources is an extremely bad thing to do.